This article was penned to the London Daily News by Mr. MacGahan. It
is dated August 2, 1876, from Tartar Bezarjik.

Since my letter of yesterday I have supped full of horrors. Nothing
has as yet been said of the Turks that I do not now believe; nothing could
be said of them that I should not think probable and likely. There is,
it seems, a point in atrocity beyond which discrimination is impossible,
when mere comparison, calculation, measurement are out of the question,
and this point the Turks have already passed. You can follow them no further.
The way is blocked up by mountains of hideous facts that repel scrutiny
and investigation, over and beyond which you can not see and do not care
to go. You feel that it is superfluous to continue measuring these mountains
and deciding whether they be a few feet higher or lower, and you do not
care to go seeking for mole hills among them. You feel that it is time
to turn back; that you have seen enough.

But let me tell you what we saw at Batak. We had some difficulty in
getting away from Pestara. The authorities were offended because Mr. Schuyler
refused to take any Turkish official with him, and they ordered the inhabitants
to tell us that there were no horses, for we had to leave our carriages
and take to the saddle. But the people were so anxious that we should go
that they furnished horses in spite of the prohibition, only bringing them
at first without saddles, by way of showing how reluctantly they did it.
We asked them if they could not bring us saddles, also, and this they did
with much alacrity and some chuckling at the way in which the Mudir's orders
were walked over. Finally we mounted and got off.

As we approached Batak our attention was drawn to some dogs on a slope
overlooking the town. We turned aside from the road, and passing over the
debris of two or three walls and through several gardens, urged our horses
up the ascent toward the dogs. They barked at us in an angry manner, and
then ran off into the adjoining fields. I observed nothing peculiar as
we mounted until my horse stumbled, when looking down I perceived he had
stepped on a human skull partly hid among the grass. It was quite hard
and dry, and might, to all appearances, have been there two or three years,
so well had the dogs done their work. A few steps further there was another
and part of a skeleton, likewise, white and dry. As we ascended, bones,
skulls, and skeletons became more frequent, but here they had not been
picked so clean, for there were fragments of half dry, half putrid flesh
attached to them. At last we came to a little plateau or shelf on the hillside,
where the ground was nearly level, with the exception of a little indentation,
where the head of a hollow broke through. We rode toward this with the
intention of crossing it, but all suddenly drew reign with an exclamation
of horror, for right before us, almost beneath our horses' feet, was a
sight that made us shudder. It was a heap of skulls, intermingled with
bones from all parts of the human body, skeletons nearly entire and rotting,
clothing, human hair and putrid flesh lying there in one foul heap, around
which the grass was growing luxuriantly. It emitted a sickening odor, like
that of a dead horse, and it was here that the dogs had been seeking a
hasty repast when our untimely approach interrupted them.

In the midst of this heap, I could distinguish the slight skeleton form,
still inclosed in a chemise, the skull wrapped about with a colored handkerchief,
and the bony ankles encased in the embroidered footless stockings worn
by Bulgarian girls. We looked about us. The ground was strewed with bones
in every direction, where the dogs had carried them off to gnaw them at
their leisure. At the distance of a hundred yards beneath us lay the town.
As seen from our standpoint, it reminded one somewhat of the ruins of Herculaneum
and Pompeii.

We looked again at the heap of skulls and skeletons before us, and we
observed that they were all small and that the articles of clothing intermingled
with them and lying about were all women's apparel. These, then, were all
women and girls. From my saddle I counted about a hundred skulls, not including
those that were hidden beneath the others in the ghastly heap nor those
that were scattered far and wide through the fields. The skulls were nearly
all separated from the rest of the bones—the skeletons were nearly all
headless. These women had all been beheaded. We descended into the town.
Within the shattered walls of the first house we came to was a woman sitting
upon a heap of rubbish rocking herself to and fro, wailing a kind of monotonous
chant, half sung, half sobbed, that was not without a wild discordant melody.
In her lap she held a babe, and another child sat beside her patiently
and silently, and looked at us as we passed with wondering eyes. She paid
no attention to us, but we bent our ear to hear what she was saying, and
our interpreter said it was as follows: "My home, my home, my poor home,
my sweet home; my husband, my husband, my dear husband, my poor husband;
my home, my sweet home." and so on, repeating the same words over again
a thousand times. In the next house were two engaged in a similar way;
one old, the other young, repeating words nearly identical:-- "I had a
home, now I have none; I had a husband, now I am a widow; I had a son,
and now I have none; I had five children, and now I have one," while rocking
themselves to and fro, beating their heads and wringing their hands. These
were women who had escaped from the massacre, and had only just returned
for the first time, having taken advantage of our visit to do so. As we
advanced there were more and more, some sitting on the heaps of stones
that covered the floors, others walking up and down, wringing their hands,
weeping and wailing.

The Turkish authorities did not even pretend that there was any Turk
killed here, or that the inhabitants offered any resistence whatever when
Achmet-Agha, who commanded the massacre, came with the Basha-Bazouks and
demanded the surrender of their arms. They at first refused, but offered
to deliver them to the regular troops or to the Kaimakan at Tartar Bazardjik.
This, however, Aschmet- Agha refused to allow, and insisted on their arms
being delivered to him and his Bashi-Bazouks. After considerable hesitation
and parleying this was done. It must not be supposed that these were arms
that the inhabitants had specially prepared for an insurrection. They were
simply the arms that everybody, Christians and Turks alike, carried and
wore openly as is the custom here. What followed the delivery of arms will
best be understood by the continuation of the recital of what we saw yesterday.
At the point where we descended into the principal street of the place
the people who had gathered around us pointed to a heap of ashes by the
roadside, among which could be distinguished a great number of calcined
bones. Here a heap of dead bodies had been burned, and it would seem that
the Turks had been making some futile and misdirected attempts at cremation.

A little further on we came to an object that filled us with pity and
horror. It was the skeleton of a young girl not more than fifteen lying
by the roadside, and partly covered with the debris of a fallen wall. It
was still clothed in a chemise; the ankles were enclosed in footless stockings,
but the little feet, from which the shoes had been taken, were naked, and
owing to the fact that the flesh had dried instead of decomposing were
nearly perfect. There was a large gash in the skull, to which a mass of
rich brown hair, nearly a yard long, still clung, trailing in the dust.
It is to be remarked that all the skeletons found here were dressed in
a chemise only, and this poor child had evidently been stripped to her
chemise, partly in the search for money and jewels, partly out of mere
brutality, and afterwards killed. * * * * At the
next house a man stopped us to show where a blind little brother had been
burned alive, and the spot where he had found his calcined bones, and the
rough, hard-vizaged man sat down and sobbed like a child. The number of
children killed in these massacres is something enormous. They were often
spitted on bayonets, and we have several stories from eye-witnesses who
saw the little babes carried about the streets, both here and at Olluk-Kni,
on the points of bayonets. The reason is simple. When a Mohammedan has
killed a certain number of infidels he is sure of Paradise, no matter what
his sins may be. There was not a house beneath the ruins which did not
contain human remains, and the street beside was strewn with them. Before
many of the doorways women were walking up and down wailing their funeral
chant. One of them caught me by the arm and led me inside of the walls,
and there in a corner, half covered with stones and mortar, were the remains
of another young girl, with her long hair flowing wildly among the stones
and dust. And the mother fairly shrieked with agony and beat her head madly
against the wall. I could only turn round and walk out sick at heart, leaving
her alone with her skeleton.

And now we began to approach the church and the school-house. The ground
is covered here with skeletons, to which are clinging articles of clothing
and bits of putrid flesh. The air was heavy, with a faint, sickening odor,
that grows stronger as we advance. It is beginning to be horrible. The
school-house, to judge by the walls that are part standing, was a fine
large building capable of accommodating 200 or 300 children. Beneath the
stones and rubbish that cover the floor to the height of several feet are
the bones and ashes of 200 women and children burned alive between these
four walls. Just beside the school-house is a broad, shallow pit. Here
were buried 200 bodies two weeks after the massacre. But the dogs uncovered
them in part. The water flowed in, and now it lies there a horrid cesspool,
with human remains floating about or lying half exposed in the mud. Near
by on the banks of the little stream that runs through the village is a
saw mill. The wheel pit beneath is full of dead bodies floating in the
water. The banks of this stream were at one time literally covered with
the corpses of men and women, young girls and children, that lay there
festering in the sun and eaten by dogs. But the pitiful sky rained down
a torrent upon them and the little stream swelled and rose up and carried
the bodies away and strewed them far down its grassy banks, through its
narrow gorges and dark defiles, beneath the thick underbrush and shady
woods, as far as Pesterea and even Tartar Bazardjik, forty miles distant.
We entered the church yard, but here the odor became so bad that it was
almost impossible to proceed. We take a handful of tobacco and hold it
against our noses while we continue our investigations. The church was
not a very large one, and it was surrounded by a low stone wall, enclosing
a small churchyard about fifty yards wide by seventy-five long. At first
we perceive nothing in particular, and the stench is so great that we scarcely
care to look about us; but we see that the place is heaped up with stones
and rubbish to the height of five or six feet above the level of the street,
and upon inspection we discover that what appeared to be a mass of stones
and rubbish is in reality an immense heap of human bodies covered over
with a thin layer of stones. The whole of the little churchyard is heaped
up with them to the depth of three or four feet, and it is from here that
the fearful odor comes. Some weeks after the massacre orders were sent
to bury the dead. But the stench at that time had become so heavy that
it was impossible to execute the order or even to remain in the neighborhood
of the village. We are told that 3,000 people were lying in this little
churchyard alone, and we could well believe it. It was a fearful sight—a
sight to haunt one through life. There were little curly heads there in
that festering mass, crushed down by heavy stones, little feet not as long
as your finger, on which the flesh was dried hard by the ardent heat before
it had time to decompose; little baby hands, stretched out as if for help;
babes that had died wondering at the bright gleam of the sabers and the
red eyes of the fierce-eyed men who wielded them; children who had died
weeping and sobbing, and begging for mercy; mothers who had died trying
to shield their little ones with their own weak bodies, all lying there
together, festering in one horrid mass. They are silent enough now. There
are no tears nor cries, no weeping, no shrieks of terror, nor prayers for
mercy.

The harvests are rotting in the fields and the reapers are rotting here
in the churchyard. We looked into the church, which had been blackened
by the burning of the woodwork, but not destroyed nor even much injured.
It was a low building with a low roof, supported by heavy, irregular arches
that, as we looked in, seemed scarcely high enough for a tall man to stand
under. What we saw there was too frightful for more than a hasty glance.
An immense number of bodies had been partly burned there and the charred
and blackened remains that seemed to fill up half way to the low, dark
arches and make them lower and darker still were lying in a state of putrefaction
too frightful to look upon. I had never imagined anything so horrible.
We all turned away sick and faint and staggered out of the fearful pest
house, glad to get into the street again. We walked about the place and
saw the same things repeated over and over again a hundred times. Skeletons
of men with the clothing and flesh still hanging and rotting together;
skulls of women, with their hair dragging in the dust; bones of children
and infants everywhere. Here they show us a house where twenty people were
buried alive; there another where a dozen girls had taken refuge and been
slaughtered to the last one as their bones amply testified. Everywhere
horrors upon horrors. Of the 8,000 to 9,000 people who made up the population
of the place only 1,200 to 1,500 are left, and they have neither tools
to dig graves with, nor strength to use spades if they had them.

As to the present condition of the people it is simply fearful to think
of. The Turkish authorities have built a few wooden sheds in the outskirts
of the village in which they sleep, but they have nothing to live upon
but what they can beg or borrow from their neighbors. And in addition to
this the Turkish officials with that cool cynicism and utter disregard
for European demands for which they are so distinguished, have ordered
those people to pay their regular taxes and war contributions just as though
nothing had happened. Ask the Porte about this at Constantinople, and it
will be denied with the most plausible protestations and the most reassuring
promises that everything will be done to help the sufferers. But everywhere
the people of the villages come with the same story— that unless they pay
their taxes and war contributions they are threatened with expulsion from
the nooks and corners of the crumbling walls, where they have found a temporary
shelter. It is simply impossible for them to pay, and what will be the
result of these demands it is not easy to say. But the government needs
money badly and must have it. Each village must make up its ordinary quota
of taxes and the living must pay for the dead.

We asked about the skulls and bones we had seen upon the hill upon our
first arrival in the village, where the dogs had barked at us. These, we
were told, were the bodies of 200 young girls who had first been captured
and particularly reserved for a worse fate. They had been kept till the
last; they had been in the hands of their captors for several days— for
the burning and pillaging had not all been accomplished in a single day—
and during this time they had suffered all that poor, weak, trembling girls
could suffer at the hands of the brutal savages. Then, when the town had
been pillaged and burned, when all their friends had been slaughtered,
these poor young things, whose very wrongs should have insured them safety,
whose very outrages should have insured them protection, were taken in
the broad light of day, beneath the smiling canopy of heaven, cooly beheaded,
then thrown in a heap there and left to rot.